Europe Since 1945-

(1)

(2)

(3)

General Editor: T. C. W. Blanning

now available

The Seventeenth Century

edited by Joseph Bergin

The Eighteenth Century

edited by T. C. W. Blanning

The Nineteenth Century

edited by T. C. W. Blanning

in preparation, volumes covering Classical Greece

The Romans

The Early Middle Ages The High Middle Ages The Late Middle Ages The Sixteenth Century The Early Twentieth Century

(4)

General Editor:

T. C. W. Blanning

Europe since 1945

Edited by

Mary Fulbrook

(5)

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta

Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press, 2001

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available

ISBN 0–19–873179–5 (hbk) ISBN 0–19–873178–7 (pbk) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset in Minion

by ReﬁneCatch Limited, Bungay, Suﬀolk Printed in Great Britain by

(6)

General Editor’s Preface

The problems of writing a satisfactory general history of Europe are many, but the most intractable is clearly the reconciliation of depth with breadth. The historian who can write with equal authority about every part of the continent in all its various aspects has not yet been born. Two main solutions have been tried in the past: either a single scholar has attempted to go it alone, presenting an unashamedly personal view of a period, or teams of specialists have been enlisted to write what are in effect anthologies. The first offers a coherent per-spective but unequal coverage, the second sacrifices unity for the sake of expertise. This new series is underpinned by the belief that it is this second way that has the fewest disadvantages and that even those can be diminished if not neutralized by close cooperation between the individual contributors under the directing supervision of the vol-ume editor. All the contributors to every volvol-ume in this series have read each other’s chapters, have met to discuss problems of overlap and omission, and have then redrafted as part of a truly collective exercise. To strengthen coherence further, the editor has written an introduction and conclusion, weaving the separate strands together to form a single cord. In this exercise, the brevity promised by the adjective ‘short’ in the series’ title has been an asset. The need to be concise has concentrated everyone’s minds on what really mattered in the period. No attempt has been made to cover every angle of every topic in every country. What this volume does provide is a short but sharp and deep entry into the history of Europe in the period in all its most important aspects.

T. C. W. Blanning Sidney Sussex College

(7)

(8)

List of contributors

j. david armstrong was appointed Professor of International Relations at the University of Exeter in , having previously held the Chair of Politics at Durham University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he has published several books on subjects ranging from Chinese foreign policy to the history of international organization. He is currently researching the evolution and spread of international legal norms.

barry eichengreen is George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His books include Globalizing Capital () and Forging an Integrated Europe (, co-edited with Jeﬀry Frieden). mary fulbrook is Professor of German History at University College London. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard, she has also held a lady Margaret Research Fellowship at Cambridge. She was founding Joint Editor of German History and has served as Chair of the German History Society. Her books include the best-selling and widely translated Concise History of Germany (), as well as Piety and Politics: Religion and Rise of Absolutism (), The Divided Nation: Germany – (), Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR () , German National Identity after the Holocaust (), and Interpretations of the Two Germanies (). Edited volumes include National Histories and European History (), Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe (, with David Cesarani), and Representing the German Nation (, with Martin Swales). She is currently completing a book on Historical Theory: Ways of Imagining the Past () and working on a Social History of the GDR.

erik goldstein is Professor of International Relations and Chair-man of the Department of International Relations at Boston Uni-versity. He was previously Professor of International History at the University of Birmingham and is the founder-editor of Diplomacy & Statecraft. He is the author of Winning the Peace: British Diplomatic

(13)

Strategy, Peace Planning, and the Paris Peace Conference, – (), Wars and Peace Treaties (), and co-editor of The End of the Cold War (), The Washington Conference, –: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability, and the Road to Pearl Harbor (), and The Munich Crisis: New Interpretations and the Road to World War II (). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

hartmut kaelble is Professor of Social History at Humboldt University, Berlin. His recent books include A Social History of Western Europe, – (), Income Distribution in Historical Perspective (, edited with Y.S. Brenner and Mark Thomas), Nachbarn am Rhein. Entfremdung und Annäherung der französischen und deutschen Gesellschaft seit  (), Der historische Vergleich. Eine Einführung zum . und . Jahrhundert (), and Europäer über Europa. Das europäische Selbstverständnis im . und . Jahrhundert ().

axel körner is Lecturer in Modern European History at University College London. He studied Musicology and History in Bonn and Berlin, obtained his MA in Lyon and a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. He is author of Urbane Eliten und kultureller Wandel (, with C. Gerbel et.al.), Das Lied von einer anderen Welt (), and ––A European Revolution? (). He is currently working on a cultural history of Bologna.

klaus larres is Reader in Politics and Contemporary History at the Queen’s University of Belfast. He holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Foreign and Security Policy. He was educated at Cologne University in Germany and the LSE in Britain. He has published widely on the Cold War and post- European and international history as well as on Anglo-American, German-American, and German-British relations. His publications include Politics of Illu-sions: Churchill, Eisenhower and the German Question, – (, in German), The Federal Republic of Germany since : Politics, Society and Economy before and after Uniﬁcation (, edited with P. Panayi), and Germany and the USA in the Twentieth Century: A Polit-ical History (, in German, edited with T. Oppelland). He is the editor of Uneasy Allies: British-German Relations and European Inte-gration since  (), and Germany since Uniﬁcation: The Devel-opment of the Berlin Republic (nd edn., ).

(14)

donald sassoon was born in Cairo and educated in Paris, Milan, London, and the USA. He is Professor of Comparative European History at Queen Mary and Westﬁeld College, University of London and a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow. His works include the prize-winning One Hundred Years of Socialism () with ﬁve trans-lations so far. His book on the popularity of the Mona Lisa is due in . He is writing a history of cultural markets since .

(15)

List of abbreviations

APEC Asia–Paciﬁc Economic Cooperation

ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations

BTO Brussels Treaty Organization

CAP common agricultural policy

CD Christian Democratic Party (Italy)

CDU Christian Democratic Union (Germany)

CFSP common foreign and security policy

CIA (US) Central Intelligence Agency

CIS Commonwealth of Independent States

COCOM Coordinating Committee for Multinational Export Controls

Comecon Council for Mutual Economic Assistance

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union

CSCE conference on security and cooperation in Europe

CSSR Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia

CSU Christian Social Union (Germany)

EBRD European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

EC European Community

ECSC European Coal and Steel Community

EDC European Defence Community

EEC European Economic Community

EFTA European Free Trade Area

EMS European monetary system

EMU European monetary union

EPC European political cooperation

EPU European Payments Union

EU European Union

Euratom Eurpean Atomic Energy Community

FDP (liberal) Free Democratic Party (Germany)

FRG Federal Republic of Germany

G Group of Seven

GATT General Agreement on Tariﬀs and Trade

GDP gross domestic product

GDR German Democratic Republic

GNP gross national product

ICOR Incremental Capital Output Ratio

IMF International Monetary Fund

KGP Smallholder Party (Hungary)

(16)

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

OECD Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation

OEEC Organization for European Economic Cooperation

OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

OSA Overseas Sterling Area

ÖVP People’s Party of Austria

PASOK Panhellenic Socialist Movement

PCI Communist Party of Italy

PPS Socialist Party of Poland

PSI Socialist Party of Italy

R & D research and development

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (or Talks)

SEA Single European Act

SPD Social Democratic Party (Germany)

SPÖ Socialist Party of Austria

UN United Nations

WEU Western European Union

(17)

(18)

1

Introduction:

Europe since 1945

Mary Fulbrook

In the early summer of  the centre of Berlin was in ruins. Around Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, one of the overground S-Bahn stations close to Berlin’s central avenue Unter den Linden, women worked in human chains, handing rubble from one to the next to clear the bombed-out buildings. Like others all across the city, clearing the ruins and trying to reconstruct a semblance of normal life, these women and their children also spent much of their time bartering on the black market to sustain some form of physical existence. Many had to sleep in cellars and ruins, and, although no longer woken nightly by bombing raids, often lay awake with worry about the return of maimed and wounded menfolk from prisoner-of-war camps, or agonized about the possible fate of those from whom they had had no word. Filled with a combination of self-pity and exhaus-tion in the struggle for survival, the majority of them gave little, if any, thought to the fates of the millions who had been murdered by the Nazi policies of expansion, conquest, and genocide.

If we jump forward to around the middle of our period––let us say, to the summer of , shortly after East Germany had officially been recognized by the West as a separate state––we find that the Frie-drichstrasse S-Bahn station had taken on a rather different political significance. Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse was by now not merely a sta-tion like any other, but one of the few highly controlled crossing points between worlds: between dramatically different parts of a divided city, a divided country, and a divided Europe. All S-Bahn trains had to halt here for thorough searches before entering the

(19)

hermetically sealed airlock between East and West, Capitalism and Communism, Democracy and Dictatorship. Although those with the right papers could travel from West to East (and back again), it was virtually impossible to pass in the opposite direction. Those ‘rubble women’ of  who had landed up in the West were by now, for the most part, affluent beneficiaries of the Western economic miracle: they might choose to ignore or forget the difficult past and divided present; or they might cross at Friedrichstrasse to visit friends and relatives who had remained in the East, bringing small luxuries and gifts with a combination of condescension towards and incompre-hension of the very different circumstances in which their former compatriots now lived. A crossing of a few metres: a crossing of political light-years.

The dark, drab corridors of the Friedrichstrasse station, the small windowless offices in which travellers had to show their papers to men in uniform, the back cells into which they might be taken for further interrogation––and possible detention if the papers were not in order––together constituted a place filled with an atmosphere of oppression and foreboding. For all but the ideologically converted, the passage from West to East in Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse was one marked by bureaucratic unpredictability, visible displays of unfathomable power, accompanied by a frisson of fear. Passage from the East to the West was, apart from those Westerners with return visas, only for the very few: politically reliable and privileged ‘travel cadres’; old-age pensioners or others able to obtain special visas for particular purposes; or the tiny handful of those who, like the small child hidden sleeping in a shopping-bag trolley whose inadvertent dreaming snuffles were rapidly muffled by the sudden complicitous coughing fits of other passengers, managed in some way to accomplish a highly dangerous illicit one-way trip to the West without discovery. Jump ahead again to the end of the century: the summer of . Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse was again a station, not only like any other, but almost better than any other: more like a wing of the departures area in any international airport. Brand new glass-fronted shops; not only fashion and baggage chains, but a computer outlet with the latest in PCs and a range of multicoloured iMacs boasting instant Internet connection; mobile phone outlets so that, through a quick purchase, any new arrival could immediately be linked by telephone to virtually anywhere in the world; fast-food chains, offering anything

(20)

from American-style burgers and fries through Turkish kebabs to more Germanic Pretzels, Brötchen, and Frankfurters; newspaper stalls with the world’s press. For anyone who had passed through here barely more than a decade before, when armed East German soldiers, border guards, and secret police had patrolled the enclosed corridors of fear, the place was simply unrecognizable. It took an almost impos-sible leap of the imagination to accept that this might, indeed, be the same physical spot of ground.

Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, in a small, speciﬁc, and symbolic way, might serve to assist in visualizing the extraordinary waves of trans-formation which washed across Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. The geographical location was the same: the people, the politics, the parameters had all been fundamentally altered. The purpose of this book is both to sketch the major trends and patterns of change, and try to tease out in detail some of the themes and variations in diﬀerent areas.

Key developments and trends

The cold war, decolonization, and European integration together rad-ically altered the nature of Europe in the latter half of the twentieth century. And a number of highly signiﬁcant general trends, often conveniently summarized in terms of globalization and inter-nationalization, fundamentally transformed the wider context. These developments, taken together, had major implications for the func-tions and character of individual European states.

First, the cold war, which divided Europe––and much of the world––into wholly opposed ideological, political, and economic sys-tems, dramatically affected the character and development of West and East European states under their respective spheres of American and Soviet influence. No history of any single European state post-, whether Western or Eastern, can avoid the question of the eco-nomic and political––and hence also social and cultural––influence of one or other of the two new superpowers, the Soviet Union or the USA. Whether by acceptance or rejection, unwilling adaptation or ambivalent internalization, all East and West European states were intimately affected by the processes of economic aid or exploitation,

(21)

political alignment or subjugation, offered to their willing or less willing allies by the Americans and Russians. In a myriad of ways, the patterns of political structure, economic growth, and social and cul-tural development of East and West European states were intrinsically affected by the cold war, such that the two sides of Europe divided by the Iron Curtain became more different from one another, and the constituent elements within each part became more alike. Then, with the collapse of the cold war, came a degree of convergence of former communist systems towards Western political and economic models, in principle if not entirely in practice. At the end of the twentieth century, notwithstanding local variations and some qualifications in terms of detail, the Western model of liberal democracy and a socially regulated form of market capitalism had become the model for virtually the whole of Europe, East as well as West.

Secondly, in the decades following the Second World War, the for-mer imperial powers in Europe withdrew from major roles on the world stage, with all the consequences of decolonization both at home and abroad. With renunciation, to a greater or lesser extent accompanied by strife and bloodshed, of inﬂuence across the globe came a reconsideration of their own identities and roles. Countries such as Britain and France had to come to terms not only with a changed status in the world and in Europe, but also with new immi-grant communities and new constructions of national identity at home. What it meant to be English or British, for example, began to change in signiﬁcance.

Thirdly, and intimately related to these developments, a process of European integration began in a handful of core states within West-ern Europe, subsequently spreading through widening circles in the West and, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, beckoning even towards some of the rapidly reconstructed post-communist states in the East. This process of integration was multifaceted and never uncontested: the impulses behind it ranged from, on the one hand, a purely functional, pragmatic belief in the importance of a common market for goods and labour, to the quite different and more visionary ideals embodying commitment to closer political as well as economic union in what was held out as the promise of a post-nationalist era. Such fundamental differences over ultimate purposes and goals were further cross-cut by specific debates over topics such as social rights, monetary union, or the extent of integration in terms

(22)

of deepening and widening. Yet even as these debates took place, real changes on the ground––movements of peoples, migration for both economic and political reasons, cross-cultural contacts, and inter-national developments––served to transform the nature of what it was that was being argued over.

There were also a number of highly signiﬁcant general trends across our period. On a worldwide stage, supranational and inter-national organizations were developed to seek solutions to military, political, and environmental problems. Long-term trends continued: industrialization, urbanization, the expansion of the service sector, scientiﬁc research and development, the growth and spread of multi-national corporations. A series of communications revolutions –– from ever faster mass transport of people and goods by air, motorway, rail, to the almost instantaneous communication of information and culture by fax, email, the Internet, satellite and cable television ––radically transformed the living and working conditions of Europeans.

The age of nationalism, a force which had dominated the previous era and ignited two world wars, thus appeared to have been super-seded by an age, if not of uncontested European integration, then at least of remarkable convergence of the socio-economic, cultural, and political proﬁles of individual European states. Do the developments of the later twentieth century add up to the creation of a Europe which is internally more homogeneous, externally more clearly deﬁned and delimited, than ever before? And what do these devel-opments mean about the changing role of the European nation state?

From fragmentation to convergence?

Internally, European countries began to become more like one another during this period, for a variety of reasons. There were cer-tain common experiences, and common imperatives, to which states responded or by which they were aﬀected in similar ways; to para-phrase John Donne, no state is an island, complete of itself; each (even Britain!) is part of the main.

At the same time, although to varying extents in diﬀerent areas, increasing similarity of political, social, and economic structures

(23)

within states was accompanied by a degree of increasing integration or at least mutual influence and coordination in certain policy areas across states. While concepts of national sovereignty and national interest were fiercely defended by individual governments (particu-larly in areas such as foreign policy), by the end of the twentieth century European states had become a great deal less different from one another, and more subject to common supranational institutions and organizations, than they were in .

It should perhaps first be said that increasing internal similarity–– or, to put it slightly differently, strikingly similar patterns of change in response to common challenges and experiences––is not an entirely new phenomenon in European history. Although the eastern bound-aries of Europe, in particular, have been defined differently at differ-ent times over the last two millennia or so, ‘Europe’ is not and has not been simply a geographical land mass stretching over a particular area of the world. From the Roman Empire through the spread of an internally divided, proselytizing Christianity, to the European Enlightenment and the modern explosions of science and technol-ogy; through the ages of discovery, expansion, and imperialism; through the periods of industrial revolution and the spread of capit-alism; whichever area one looks at, there have been common socio-economic and cultural trends and patterns across Europe, refracted differently in different areas, but always within an interrelated system where changes in any part affect others. Even the emergence of dis-tinctive states within Europe (from the diffuse sovereignty of medi-eval feudalism right through to the often bitterly nationalist struggles between modern forms of autocracy, democracy, and dictatorship) was a product of interrelations within the whole; it should not be forgotten that the development of state bureaucracies for the collec-tion of taxes and recruitment of armies clearly pre-dated the spread of articulate conceptions of modern nationalism (as opposed to dyn-astic loyalty).

What was new, therefore, about the latter half of the twentieth century was perhaps not so much the fact of a series of transitions in some sort of tandem, but rather the speciﬁc character of these transi-tions and the changing place of Europe within the wider world. In particular, the starting-point of  was perhaps peculiarly a

(24)

moment of national fragmentation: the end, in a moment of exhaus-tion, of a cataclysmic era of warfare engulﬁng the whole of Europe and indeed the world. This starting-point, in a wide variety of ways–– mental and emotional, as well political and economic––set the scene for developments in Europe over the latter half of the century.

Military expansions, conquest, and warfare had always been major factors in European history. But the wars of the first half of the twentieth century were on a qualitatively new scale, and their impact was rather different as far as the roles of European nation states were concerned. The Second World War had massive effects, both in the short term and over the longer term, on all of Europe in a variety of ways.

There were, first of all, the immediate, visible effects: the loss of millions of lives, and the mass movement of peoples in the aftermath; the destruction of cities, transport networks, and productive cap-acity; the presence of the armies of the Western and Soviet Allies. Of major importance was the redrawing of the political boundaries of Central Europe in the post-war settlement, and the involvement of the superpowers in European affairs. There were also long-term eco-nomic effects: the injection of American Marshall aid to the West, fuelling the sustained economic growth of the ‘long s’, and more broadly but no less importantly altering the character and mentality of West European industrial and class relations, on the one hand; and the concomitant radical reorientation of East European economic systems under Soviet influence, on the other. Far more difficult to define and quantify, but of equally fundamental importance, were the diverse memories of war, both private and public, both institutional-ized and subterranean, which stamped their mark as much on official policy formation as on popular attitudes and mutual perceptions among the peoples of Europe. The reactions of many leading European politicians (not least, Britain’s then prime minister, Mrs Thatcher) to the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall in November  dramatically illustrated the extraordinary heritage of collective memories of war.

There were not only common European experiences and memories––however divided on lines of erstwhile aggressor, col-laborator, opponent, or victim––but also certain common impera-tives, certain common questions (to which there might be diﬀerent answers) which had to be faced in a changing world. All European

(25)

states, whether ultimately choosing to join or remain outside particu-lar new frameworks (the EEC, NATO, and so on), had to confront the issue of the increasing internationalization of economic, political, and military aﬀairs in the latter half of the twentieth century. To choose to remain neutral, to remain outside a particular supra-national organizational framework, was not and could not be a deci-sion for retaining the status quo of a rapidly disappearing era in a changing world environment.

Certain pressures were quite general and affected all of Europe, though with differential impact in different areas at different times: the economic power of multinationals, such as fast-food chains which first colonized Western Europe and in the s made the leap to the East (Erich Honecker would be turning in his grave at the sight of chains of McDonald’s across eastern Germany); the powers of international television advertising and an increasingly global popu-lar culture in music and fashion; the need to reach certain inter-national standards of accommodation and provision in seeking to attract the tourist industry, as much in the older ski resorts of the Alpine and Nordic regions of Europe as in the newly opened regions of a rediscovered Central and Eastern Europe.

More speciﬁcally, within the EU at least, there were particular pres-sures for standardization or harmonization, and edicts on matters as diverse as the quality of wine, beer, and chocolate, on the one hand, or human rights and the corporal punishment of schoolchildren on the other (the highly desirable standardization of electric sockets still awaits the attention of an assiduous Eurocrat). There were also con-scious policies to reshape the nature of Europe and Europeans, from regional development funds to schemes for assisting the mobility of people within Europe. Even quite mundane matters such as the European passport and blue Euro-starred car bumper stickers might have a subliminal eﬀect.

Although, as Axel Körner points out in his chapter on culture (Chapter ), there remained quite distinctive local styles in culture, the simple fact of increased exposure to other inﬂuences led to an inescapable dialogue among, if not increasing similarity of, inter-national styles and art forms; mutual cultural inﬂuence can take many forms, including not only adoption or incorporation of elem-ents of other styles but also adverse reactions and explicit rejection. Nor should it be forgotten that the premium on originality in

(26)

the sphere of culture is itself a cultural constant common across Europe.

Harder to explain are some examples of political convergence, as analysed in the chapter on politics by Donald Sassoon (Chapter ): most notably, within the first half of our period, the ending of fascist regimes in Southern Europe and their replacement by liberal dem-ocracies; and, quite dramatically, the collapse of communist states within a couple of years of one another in –, and their replace-ment by (often still tenuous) democratic regimes; more generally (and with far greater variability), the odd way in which many major West European governments appeared to switch colours ––from con-servative to socialist or social democratic, from socialist or social democratic to conservative––almost in tandem, or at least in visible waves. Even where the governing parties were of quite different polit-ical colours, there often seemed to be a degree of marching in tandem with respect to certain areas of policy––as in the well-nigh universal post-war development of the welfare state, although with specific national variants of particular social and health care schemes (see particularly Chapter , by Hartmut Kaelble). A distinctively European form of national politics of the centre ground appeared to be emer-ging, if in shuffling and not always well-coordinated gait. To some extent these areas of convergence related to broader secular trends: economic cycles of growth and recession; increasing longevity, an ever larger population of the elderly, and a shrinking proportion of adults in employment; and very broadly shared assumptions about communal responsibility and state intervention in social engineering (sustained even under governments of the right who proclaimed there was no such thing as society).

Yet, for all that has been said about convergence, it is worth under-lining the degree to which different governments fiercely retained conceptions of national sovereignty, and defended the right to be independent and different. There was still choice; Europe at the end of our period was still a Europe of distinct regions and states. Even more strikingly, subjective patterns of identification and emotional attachment had run in a very different direction during this period. For all the homogenization or convergence in social, economic, and political structures, for all the upwards integration in terms of policy formation, there had not been a corresponding movement at the level of perceptions of identity. If anything, movement was in the other

(27)

direction: downwards or backwards, towards identities rooted in local areas, or historical (ethnic, cultural) roots. Although Europeans were becoming more alike in many respects, there were no particular reasons (such as threats from a common enemy) to promote articula-tion of a widely shared European identity.

Towards a European identity?

The idea of Europe and of what constitutes European identity has taken many different forms over the ages. Taking a rather long view of the question, one might hazard the generalization that Europeans have perhaps been most aware of their common characteristics when confronted (particularly in a hostile situation) by the culturally or ethnically constructed Other: in face of the Barbarian, the Infidel, the Savage, or, more recently, immigrant populations of non-European origin (or at least non-white appearance). When discussing the ques-tion of European identity, we have to take care to distinguish among different groups and different contexts of identity construction.

In the twentieth century, and particularly in the period since , several major conceptions of European identity may be dis-tinguished. There are of course quite different versions propagated by particular elites: the visionary notions of the ‘European ideal’, often yearning towards some sort of peace and harmony among Europe-ans, to be embodied in a United States of Europe, must be sharply distinguished from the more pragmatic, functionalist views which saw a European common market as a means of enhancing economic growth and the mobility of goods and labour between what were to remain quite separate sovereign states. And these rather specific polit-ical and economic conceptions, tied to particular programmes for association or integration, are different again from the vaguer, general vision, rooted in part in rather unexamined notions of a common cultural heritage and values, in part in common wider interests in peace and the environment, associated with Mikhail Gorbachev’s evocative notion of a ‘common European home’. Nor, in this context, should it be forgotten that many elites were quite opposed to any idea of Europe beyond that of the wider arena for the pursuit of what were deemed to be national interests.

(28)

As far as popular conceptions are concerned, the position is far less clear. The European passport, and the dropping of internal border controls, were launched well ahead of popular perceptions of identi-ﬁcation, which largely remained stubbornly national rather than European. There was little development at grass-roots level in many areas of Europe of anything which might be called a real sense of European identity. Professions of belief in such an identity were most apparent in states where there were problems with national identity and low national pride––most notably, West Germany after the Holocaust.

Somewhat paradoxically, a sense of European identity became more evident, perhaps for more pragmatic reasons, in regions of Europe which had a strong sense of local identity and felt that local or regional interests were not always best served by the institutions of the nation state (particularly when seen as being in reality a state constituted by several nations, of which one was dominant). Within the United Kingdom, Scotland and Wales particularly come to mind in this respect. In a rather diﬀerent manner, the Republic of Ireland–– with a strong positive sense of Irish national identity ––also developed strong commitment to a sense of European identity (possibly reﬂected, for example, in its strong explicit commitment to the teach-ing of European languages). On the other hand, the European ideal might also be found appealing by members of subordinate groups who were driven by circumstances to migrate for economic or polit-ical reasons.

Yet at the same time there are strong tendencies towards an emphasis on cultural diversity and on identities based either in spe-ciﬁc local regions, or in longer historical roots. In cosmopolitan areas or regions with large multicultural populations we have groups appealing to the recovery of ethnic or cultural–religious roots, such as Afro-Caribbean, Turkish, Islamic; not to mention the revival of bloody ethnic conﬂicts in the Balkans, with which the twentieth cen-tury seems to have both begun and ended. We have the resurrection or invention and celebration of historical identities, even, paradoxic-ally, in the ‘musealization’ (Musealisierung) of their passing––as in the mushrooming of the heritage industry right across Europe. We have an emphasis on local and regional identities which have long been a feature of federal states; also in those which were relative latecomers as nation states, welding together remarkable linguistic

(29)

and cultural diversity, such as Italy; and even in areas of long-centralized states such as the Basque region of Spain. We have the articulation of identities rooted in particular social and economic, as well as cultural, experiences (as in the emergence of a distinctive East German identity after the collapse of the GDR). There are overtly politicized parallels in the case of the renewed appeal of nationalist movements in Eastern Europe after the removal of the communist straitjacket, and the break-up of former multinational states, most notably, of course, the former Soviet Union, as well as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

What is particularly interesting about the current situation with respect to ‘Europe’ is that processes of integration––in terms of over-coming linguistic diversity and fostering the mobility of people and the broadening of horizons––appears to be simultaneous with an attempted resurrection (or downright creation) of local, ethnic, or other forms of identity. So we have simultaneous trends running in divergent directions: towards greater interaction, integration, and intercommunication, on the one hand; and towards stronger support for, or appeals for the renewal of, specific local, cultural, or ethnic identities on the other. ‘European identity’ has become more like a mosaic floor, made up of many different stones within larger pat-terns, rather than a woven carpet with large splashes of colour.

Identity is not only a matter of answering the question of what features a population considers itself to have in common, whether in terms of past heritage or current attributes; it is also about the expres-sion and common celebration of shared values and ideals, which are often only articulated in face of a common enemy; and about notions of a common future. While Europeans might in many respects share similar features and attributes (and those citizens of the EU even a common passport, though not necessarily the same political rights across diﬀerent European states), notions of shared values and ideals, common enemies, and a common future are strikingly absent. There are no shared dreams, however illusory (the Land of the Free, the Open Frontier, the Melting-Pot, the Great Society). Nor––despite common military engagements in the Gulf War or Kosovo in the s––shared views on the use of military force. Without any emer-gent European ‘dual identities’ (no notions of being a Latvian Euro-pean, Black/Asian EuroEuro-pean, Dutch EuroEuro-pean, along the lines of ‘Hispanic American’, ‘Polish American’, and so on), or any sense of

(30)

common values and common cause outside the highly mobile circles of certain economic, professional, and political groups, Europeans by and large remain without an overarching sense of common identity.

Each of the thematic chapters which follow analyses in some detail the key processes and patterns of change in politics, society, the econ-omy, culture, and relations within Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world. Taken together, these analyses present a complex picture in which general trends are seen to be refracted differently in different institutional and historical conditions. Within Europe at the end of the twentieth century there remained significant diversity between individual states and between different areas of Europe––not only between Eastern and Western Europe (both pre- and post-), but also between inner core and peripheries, southern and northern fringes, and across different cultural and other divides. Yet, for all the complexities, certain broad patterns of convergence still emerge; there are common processes and trends which have rendered Europe an internally more homogeneous region of the world, even in all its still characteristic variety and diversity.

Some Europeans will deplore, others will rejoice in, the fact that a common, widely shared sense of European identity does not appear to have accompanied increasing internal convergence or homogen-ization. It is worth remembering that, historically, notions of Europe-anness appear to have been at their strongest and most explicit when articulated by groups possessed of a distinct sense of superiority in face of what they saw as inferior peoples, savages in the jungle. Post-colonialism, and a demoted place in world affairs, have indeed been accompanied by a more tightly guarded set of European barriers of one sort or another (particularly with respect to immigration and rights to citizenship). It is arguably no bad thing that this has remained dissociated from subjective bonds of emotional attachment and identification, or a sense of collective European purpose against a clearly defined Other. Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the response of Mahatma Gandhi when asked, on arrival on a trip to London, what he thought of the idea of European civilization: his reply was that he would be very much in favour of it.

(31)

2

Politics

Donald Sassoon

Successful settlement of wars usually involves eliminating the causes of the conﬂict. Forcibly or willingly, the defeated party––if it survives––is integrated into the system of values of the victors, thus precluding a return match. The great European civil war of – was no exception: German militarism, whether in its Nazi form or in any of its previous incarnations, was obliterated along with all its ideological allies, whether in Rome, Budapest, or Helsinki. Sub-sequently no manifestly pro-Nazi party was able to become a signiﬁcant political force anywhere in Europe. Across the ideological dividing line which partitioned Europe after  there was a near-universal consensus on at least one aspect of the recent past: Nazism was regarded as a barbaric force and an absolute evil. This held true also where surviving regimes had features which resembled those of the demolished fascist dictatorships: Spain and Portugal. Even there, pro-Hitler or pro-Mussolini sympathies expressed during the war were conveniently tempered and rapidly forgotten. In any case, these conservative authoritarian regimes had taken no part in the war, made no political or territorial claim, and had neither the means nor the design to dominate others. Similarly, the military junta which ruled Greece between  and  disclaimed any connection with the legacy of fascism and Nazism and constantly reiterated its loyalty to the West.

Thus the revanchism which was one of the chief political features of the s found no sizeable supporters in post- Europe. Between ––when the inevitable post-war adjustments had taken place––and the collapse of the communist system in – there were no fundamental changes in borders or in the territorial integrity of the European states, or any substantial alteration in the internal

(32)

regimes of any of the European countries except in Spain, Portugal, and Greece in the mid-s. Until the break-up of Yugoslavia in the s a state of peace prevailed among all European states. In com-parison to the pre- decades, there was no substantial civil strife. The use of mass terror by the state (purges, large-scale deportations) was circumscribed to the USSR, where it did not outlast Stalin’s death in . The quasi-official terror gangs of the s––the Freikorps in Germany, blackshirts in Italy, and Black and Tans in Ireland––did not reappear. Militarized police force was used by the authorities to quell strikes and demonstrations in East Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Yugoslavia (especially in Kosovo in the s), and elsewhere at different times and for different causes. Such use of force was relatively limited, but the repression of the demonstrations in Berlin by Soviet forces on  June  brought about the deaths of at least fifty-one people. In the democratic countries of the West the peak of state violence was probably reached in , when over  Algerian demonstrators were killed by the Parisian police under the orders of Maurice Papon and dumped in the Seine. Elsewhere in Eastern and Central Europe the numbers of those killed were much higher but never reached the scale of the massacres of the past.

The intervention of Soviet-backed troops in Hungary () and Czechoslovakia () did not lead to prolonged fighting and, by the tragic standards of the preceding decades of European history, did not bring about a massive loss of life: in Hungary , were killed by the Soviet troops,  by Hungarian anti-Soviet revolutionaries; in Czechoslovakia  people were subsequently executed, while a further ninety people died as a consequence of the Soviet-backed intervention. The wave of terrorism that plagued some European countries in the s and s (mainly Spain, Italy, Northern Ire-land, and West Germany) led to no significant political changes. Until the collapse of communism post-war Europe exhibited an impressive stability. When change occurred, it was almost invariably in the direction of parliamentary democracy (Southern Europe in the s, Eastern and Central Europe in the s) and, usually, peace-fully or with minimal violence––with the significant exception of the  _{Karel Bartosek, ‘Europe centrale et du Sud-Est’, in Stéphane Courtois (ed.), Le}

Livre noir du communisme (Paris: Robert Laﬀont, ), .

(33)

former Yugoslavia, where bloodshed escalated throughout the s and led to the ﬁrst military action by the forces of the Atlantic Alliance.

The Second World War, far from being followed by anything approaching political unity, had led to a division of the continent wider than ever before. Yet the unusually prolonged period of Euro-pean peace was underpinned by a lengthy process of political and economic convergence that was equally unprecedented. As the cen-tury reached its end, the nation states of Europe were closer to each other than at any time in their entire history. One of the many para-doxes of this convergence was that it was accompanied by a pro-nounced increase in the number of states: the twenty-seven states that were extant in  (including the two Germanies, which became distinct states in ) had become thirty-seven some ﬁfty years later. Assuming Turkey and Cyprus to be outside Europe, and not counting Malta and statelets such as Liechtenstein and the Republic of San Marino, the following states constituted Europe until the collapse of communism: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the USSR, and Yugoslavia. After the collapse of communism, the reuniﬁcation of Germany, and the subsequent break-up of the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, the number rose to thirty-seven by including (along with Russia) Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Moldavia, Belarus, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia-Montenegro (still known as Yugoslavia), and Macedonia. Further fragmentation cannot be ruled out.

The most vivid feature of the post-war fracturing of Europe was the divide created by the cold war between a system of states domin-ated by communist parties in its eastern and central land mass and a ‘Western’ sector where capitalism prevailed. The latter was in turn further fragmented along political lines. Democracy prevailed in most countries, but pre-war authoritarian regimes persisted in Por-tugal and Spain, while Greece, recovering from civil war (–), was far from being a consolidated democracy. The pivotal state of continental Europe, Germany, originally divided into four zones, developed into two distinct states. Some Western democracies ––

(34)

notably Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, and Switzerland––opted for neutrality, while the majority aligned themselves to the Atlantic Alliance along with Turkey, Portugal, and Greece, while Spain enjoyed a close relationship with the United States.

Disharmony appeared to deepen with the formation of distinct Western trading associations ––the European Economic Community and the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). Eastern Europe looked more monolithic, but it was never an undiﬀerentiated communist bloc: soon Yugoslavia and later Albania abandoned the Soviet fold, espousing diﬀerent roads to socialism. Romania eventually adopted an independent foreign policy. Poland maintained a large private sector in agriculture. By  Hungary had acquired a thriving, if undeveloped, market economy.

The process of European integration under the aegis of the EEC (later the European Union) was enhanced in the s with the entry in  of Great Britain, Ireland, and Denmark, thus undermining the survival of the EFTA bloc. The expansion of the Community con-tinued after the collapse of the authoritarian regimes of Portugal, Greece, and Spain in – and their successful bid to join the EEC. By , when Mikhail Gorbachev began the reforms that would pre-cipitate the end of the USSR, all market economies of Europe had a similar liberal-democratic parliamentary system. The end of com-munism brought about the unification of Germany, the break-up of Czechoslovakia, and the return to full sovereignty of the three Baltic states. Nearly all former communist states adopted the economic and political system of Western Europe. Their party alignment ––a group of centre-left parties facing one of centre-right parties ––was an almost exact replica of those of the West. The exceptions are far from insignificant: the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, Belarus, and Mol-davia remain politically and economically unstable. The break-up of Yugoslavia brought about the formation of relatively stable nation states, such as Slovenia, Croatia, and, possibly, Macedonia. Serbia’s borders, however, remained far from assured, while Bosnia became a battle zone with no secure central authority––the first instance of extended warfare in Europe since .

At this stage it is impossible to prognosticate whether these issues will be satisfactorily settled over the next years and decades or whether they will lead to a new era of discord and disintegration. The history of Europe has long ceased to be under the exclusive control of

(35)

Europeans––as it had been since the end of the ﬁfteenth century. Its future looks as uncertain as that of the rest of the planet.

The historical verdict on the second half of the twentieth century can only record that those European nation states that emerged out of the great conflicts of the first half with a democratic system of government, a market economy, and a welfare state faced on internal or external threats, survived all crises, and became the model to which other European states eventually conformed. This great success was not unique. In the rest of the world, democratic countries with market economies, such as Australia and New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Japan, also seemed to offer apparently less fortu-nate nations a vision of stability, democracy, and wealth. The tri-umphalism which heralded the end of communism and which led some to proclaim, somewhat ahistorically, the ‘end of history’ thus had a basis in reality.

Reshaping Europe after 1945

The political systems of those countries that had stayed out of the war remained unaﬀected. In Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, and Portugal politics proceeded following the same rules and under the same conditions as before the war. The same can be said for Spain, where Franco had taken advantage of the period of warfare to con-solidate his  victory in the civil war by the wholesale slaughter of his opponents: thousands of supporters of the defeated Republic were killed; many more were imprisoned. By  he was ﬁrmly entrenched, although some guerrilla activity continued until . Some of the West European states also exhibited remarkable continu-ity: Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. They had all been constitutional monarchies before the war, and remained so afterwards.

France too returned to the pre-war political system. There was an attempt to disguise this as the beginning of a novel era by drafting a new constitution for the Fourth Republic. In reality, the diﬀerences  _{See Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War,}_{– (Princeton:}

Princeton University Press, ), app.

(36)

between the Fourth and the Third Republics were insigniﬁcant. Both were based on a weak executive, a ﬁgurehead president, and a power-ful parliament dominated by fractious political parties. The same instability that had characterized the Third Republic plagued the gov-ernments of the Fourth. Charles de Gaulle, who had led the anti-fascist forces during the war, failed to secure the strong presidential system he desired and left politics, albeit temporarily.

Elsewhere in Western Europe changes were more signiﬁcant. Italy had experienced fascist rule for the whole of the inter-war period, had been Germany’s closest ally in , and had turned against it in . A referendum in  established a republic. A new constitution was drafted resulting in a political system relatively similar to that which preceded fascism and analogous to that of the French Fourth Republic.

Austria’s debatable claim that it had been forced into an alliance with Germany worked to its advantage: permanent partition was avoided and the country returned to the parliamentary system it had had in the s. The USSR withdrew its troops and Austria complied with the main condition exacted––permanent neutrality––a situation accepted by all main parties and welcomed by public opinion. Fin-land, which had also been occupied by Soviet troops, followed a similar course.

Even in Germany there was a return to a previous political system––at least in that section that had been partitioned among Western powers. Though the diﬀerences between Weimar Germany (–) and the FRG should not be underestimated, the consti-tutional similarities are remarkable, bearing in mind that in the hia-tus between the two were twelve years of Nazism, including six years of total war, and that the outcome was the division of the country.

There was some degree of continuity even in Greece. After the defeat of the communists in the civil war () repression and a rigged electoral system kept the communists and their allies at the margins of political life. Though there was no reversion to the dicta-torship of the Metaxas era, there was a return to the old political cleavage between traditional monarchists and liberal modernizers. It was only after the return of full democracy in  that a modern socialist party emerged.

The political institutions that prevailed in Western Europe shortly after the end of the war had thus been tried before it. Nevertheless,

(37)

beneath the relative continuity of institutional politics and consti-tutional arrangements there were significant developments. The first was that political democracy was finally consolidated: true universal suffrage became the norm; members of the legislature were now elected by the entire population; women finally obtained the right to vote on the same terms as men in France (), Belgium (), Italy (), and Greece (). Switzerland remained the bizarre exception to universal suffrage until .

The second major development was the considerable advance of the parties of the left, as evidenced by their massive gains in the first post-war elections. Previous major political divisions, such as central-izers versus decentralcentral-izers or anticlericalism versus clericalism, became secondary. The primary ideological cleavage ––within an overarching consensus––was that of left versus right, that is between parties inspired by socialism and those committed to a capitalism tempered by traditional values. The Republic of Ireland, where the national question dominated politics, was the only significant exception to the primacy of the left–right split in democratic Europe. In Britain in  the Labour Party, for the first time in its history, won an absolute majority of seats in the House of Commons and . per cent of the vote. In Sweden, Norway, and Austria socialist parties gained over  per cent. Where these fared less well––as in Finland, France, and Italy, where they gained – per cent––the communist parties gained at least  per cent or more. The positive electoral performance of the parties of the left was one aspect of the wave of anti-capitalist feelings that pervaded Europe after the war. In most instances the right or centre-right, far from being dominated by overtly pro-capitalist parties, was led by Christian parties committed to the containment of market forces and the defence of traditional values against unconstrained individualism. Such development was particularly evident in Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, and Holland. This explains the wide political consensus that permeated Western Europe. It enabled post-war reconstruction to be initiated by a coali-tion of parties representing the left, the centre, and even the centre-right. The two important exceptions to this were Great Britain, where Labour ruled alone until , and the FRG, where the first general elections occurred only in ––when the left tide had already subsided––resulting in the victory of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) within a coalition government.

(38)

By this stage most of the countries of Western Europe had laid the foundations of their welfare systems. The parties of the left were the main proponents of this development, regarding welfare reforms as a form of socialism or as an advance towards a socialist society. The evolution, however, was not seriously disputed by their conservative opponents, who could legitimately claim that the his-torical forerunners of welfare reforms had been ‘social’ liberals like Lloyd George, authoritarian conservatives like Bismarck, or social Christians. Indeed, the agenda for a post-war welfare system had been drafted during the war by a British Liberal, William Beveridge. This consensus across the political spectrum explains not only why the welfare states were established in the ﬁrst place, but also why they outlasted the initial electoral successes of the left. Nevertheless, it was in the one country where the left had overall control of parliament, Britain, that the most comprehensive free national health service was established and where a complex system of social protection, from pensions to unemployment beneﬁts, was set up. The more prosperous nations, above all the Scandinavian coun-tries, pursued the same path. Fear of old age, illness, and unemployment would no longer trouble the citizens of Europe––or so it was hoped.

The enlargement of the sphere of the state into welfare––replacing, in many instances, the provisions of charitable bodies, usually religious––was accompanied by its extension into the economy. In some instances, notably in Austria, Italy, Britain, and France, this was achieved directly through the nationalization or municipalization of some or all of the utilities (such as gas, water, telephones, and elec-tricity), and some of the manufacturing and extracting industries. Radio and later television remained totally or in part in the hands of the state, even in market economies. Only in the s was there a systematic expansion of private capital in broadcasting throughout Europe. In all cases the state, through monetary and ﬁscal policies, took upon itself the task of overseeing the general performance of the economy at the macroeconomic level. The aim was to ensure that the capitalist economic cycle would never again be out of control, plunging the European economies into a devastating depression of s proportions.

The state had thus become much stronger throughout Western Europe, even in those states, such as the FRG, Austria, and

(39)

Switzerland, that had opted for a far less centralist structure than, say, Britain, Sweden, France, and Italy.

West European capitalism emerged from this reconstruction both weakened and strengthened. It was weakened in the sense that entire areas of economic life––for instance, health, transport, gas, electricity, water supply, central banking, and a whole host of public services, from street cleaning to mail delivery––were removed from or kept out of the market. It was strengthened because the rationalization of industries through nationalization led to reduced costs, and because the socialization of public services (health, education, pensions, insurance) amounted to a socialization of expenditure that would otherwise have had to be borne by individuals. This, in turn, con-tained the pressure for higher wages. More generally, the provision of welfare made capitalism more acceptable by reducing the possibility of market failures in the delivery of critical services.

The political fate of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe sharply contrasted with that of their Western counterparts. This was not surprising. Before the war they had all, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, been under some form of authoritarian regime. All had been occupied by Germany. All (except Czechoslovakia) had a large agricultural sector. All had suﬀered massive losses and devastation ––well in excess of all other Western countries except Germany. Post-war adjustments were made more complex by wide-spread ‘ethnic cleansing’ (the practice had preceded the coinage of the expression), especially in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, from where millions of ethnic Germans were expelled. By  there were  million so-called Heimatvertriebene (‘people expelled from their homeland’) in the FRG. The Czechoslovak–Hungarian Treaty of  led to the exchange of some ,–, Slovaks and Hungarians (though over , remained in Czechoslovakia). Sporadic ﬁghting amounting to near civil war persisted in Poland until .

All the countries of Eastern Europe had been liberated from Nazi rule by the Red Army, except Albania and Yugoslavia. As a result, communist takeover in these two countries departed from what became the established pattern. The Yugoslav communist leader, Tito (Josip Broz), rejected calls from London and Moscow for a national coalition government with the monarchists, and declared a republic in . As the war was approaching its end, he turned against those

(40)

opposing him with methods that included the destruction of villages deemed to have supported Serbian and Croatian nationalists. When Soviet troops entered Yugoslavia, it was with the understanding that Tito’s partisans would remain in power. In Albania the communist party established full control rapidly. Its leader, Enver Hoxha, declared a republic in  with the backing of the Allies, while Sta-lin’s diplomatic support enabled him to resist Tito’s attempts to incorporate the country into Yugoslavia. Thus a link was forged between Albanian ‘national’ communism and Stalinism that out-lasted the Soviet condemnation of Stalin’s crimes.

Elsewhere in the East the reorganization of democratic political life occurred under the aegis of Soviet power. The consequence was that the communist parties enjoyed considerable advantages. In any case, immediately after the war the communists had gained in popularity because of their role in resisting Nazism and the prestige of the USSR. Even among those not ideologically inclined towards communism there were some who were so disenchanted with the past that they regarded the communists as representing modernity and a better future. It was believed that they would get rid of corruption and backwardness. It is impossible to gauge accurately the magnitude of this initial popularity, though the results of the first elections (rela-tively free of interference) indicate that the size of their electorate was comparable to that of the stronger communist parties of Western Europe. Their real influence was, of course, wider than their electoral support. The authoritarian right had been wiped out, its leaders purged. The political parties that re-emerged were reluctant to take a strong anti-communist line, for this might have tarred them with the brush of fascism. The presence of the Red Army and the weight of the USSR was a substantial obstacle to the free expression of anti-communist views. Political opportunists swelled the ranks of the left as they had previously swelled those of the right. Communist parties that had been tiny organizations before the war grew exponentially in numbers––a phenomenon that also occurred in Italy, where the Ital-ian Communist Party, the PCI, grew from , in  to  million in . The communists pushed everywhere for the formation and/ or continuation of governments of national unity. While these broad coalition governments emerged throughout most of continental Europe, in the East the communists always had the upper hand because they benefited from financial, logistic, and organizational

(41)

help from the Soviet Union. This is the situation that prevailed between  and –.

The coalition strategy adopted by all communist parties assumed that governments of national unity would oversee the entire period of post-war reconstruction. In the East, where they had a position of strength, they used it to maximize their hold on political power. Initially, however, there was no blueprint for a generalized takeover. Soviet policy, in so far as it had clearly deﬁned aims, was directed towards ensuring that all neighbouring states would have govern-ments friendly to that of the USSR. The communists were cautious and prudent, pursued compromise, and avoided an excessively rad-ical agenda, concentrating instead on demanding agrarian reform and a limited expansion of the public sector.

This explains why in Romania the communists, led by the independent-minded Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej, allowed the mon-archy to survive the war until , supported a ‘friendly’ non-communist, Petru Groza, as prime minister, included representatives of the liberals and of the National Peasant Party in the government (), and promulgated a moderate agrarian reform that left Church lands untouched. But in  the National Peasant Party was banned, the social democrats were pressured into merging with the commun-ists, and King Michael was forced to abdicate. The landslide victory of the new People’s Democratic Front––in eﬀect the communist party––in the rigged elections of March  ensured the ﬁnal takeover.

In Bulgaria the coalition strategy was equally short-term. Wide-spread purges ensured the elimination of all possible anti-communist forces, the rest being forcibly compelled to join the communist-dominated Fatherland Front, this process being completed only in  with the forcible absorption of the social democrats.

In Hungary the communists had obtained only  per cent of the vote in , their socialist rivals a little more, while the Smallholder Party, or KGP (itself a coalition of disparate groups), gained an abso-lute majority; their leader, Ferenc Nágy, became prime minister in a coalition government that included the communists. By  the purges of former fascists and collaborators had weakened further the anti-communist forces. In spite of irregularities during the  election campaign, the Hungarian communists obtained only  per cent, though, with their allies, which now included the rapidly

Europe Since 1945-

T. C. W. Blanning

Europe since 1945

Edited by

Mary Fulbrook

3

General Editor’s Preface

Contents

List of contributors

List of abbreviations

1

Introduction:

Europe since 1945

Mary Fulbrook

Key developments and trends

From fragmentation to convergence?

Towards a European identity?

2

Politics

Donald Sassoon

Reshaping Europe after 1945